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Another batch of student-loan borrowers in public service has been approved for billions of dollars in debt relief.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden and the Education Department announced that 60,000 borrowers are getting $4.5 billion in student-loan forgiveness following fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments.
According to the White House, this brings the number of borrowers approved for debt relief through PSLF to 1 million under the Biden administration.
"If you ever wonder if change is possible, if you ever wonder if what's broken can be fixed, if you ever wonder whether the government can turn a promise broken into a promise kept, just look at what President Biden and Vice President Harris did for these 1 million public servants across the country today," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters on a Wednesday press call.
Under the Trump administration, the majority of borrowers in public service were not approved for relief through PSLF due to flaws within the program, including rejections due to paperwork errors and processing backlogs. The Biden administration took steps to reform the program, including reevaluating borrowers' accounts to determine if payments they previously made would bring them to the threshold for relief.
These fixes have resulted in incremental batches of relief over the past few years; in July, for example, the Education Department approved another 35,000 in PSLF for $1.2 billion in debt cancellation.
Still, this latest relief comes at a moment of uncertainty for millions of federal borrowers. Earlier this year, a group of GOP state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block Biden's new SAVE income-driven repayment plan, intended to give borrowers more affordable monthly payments with a shorter timeline for loan forgiveness. A federal court blocked the entirety of the plan pending a final decision on its legality, leaving 8 million enrolled borrowers in limbo.
Additionally, Biden's second attempt at broader student-loan forgiveness is also stalled in court. After the Supreme Court struck down his first try at broad debt relief last summer, the Education Department announced a Plan B that would forgive student debt for borrowers under the Higher Education Act of 1965, expected to benefit over 30 million borrowers.
While the department has not yet released a final rule for the relief, a federal court placed a preliminary injunction on the plan following a lawsuit from GOP attorneys general who said the department was violating administration procedure by planning to implement the relief ahead of schedule.
A senior administration official told reporters on the Wednesday press call that the Education Department will continue moving forward with targeted forms of debt relief for borrowers while its broader plans remain on hold as the legal process progresses.
"From day one of my Administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity," Biden said in a Thursday statement. "I will never stop working to make higher education affordable – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us."
